Welcome

EurSafe Congress 201813th-16th June

Welcome to the 14th Congress of the European Society for Agricultural and Food Ethics to take place in 2018 at the University of Veterinary Medicine, Vienna, Austria!

EurSAFE 2018 is a forum for discussion of ethical issues around food, including production, consumption, marketing, policy and health. The future perspective and the utopian tradition as a driving force and inspiration for changes in society are central to the congress. However, general contributions to agricultural, animal and food ethics are also welcome.

The EurSafe 2018 Congress in Vienna will focus on the role of professionals and professions in the food chain. Within the public debate surrounding food it is often argued that the key to meeting current challenges is changing consumer behaviour. Professionals and practitioners like farmers, retailers, veterinarians, or researchers are only in the limelight when the media report on so called “food scandals”. To better understand and get to grips with current and future problems in the food chain, it is essential that we pay greater attention to the role and position of professionals. Different expectations and interests lead to challenging and complex situations for all parties trying to understand the nature of the problems. Additionally, participating players act in different areas of responsibility and are subject to professional values and constructions of virtues, as well as expectations about their expertise. Therefore, the prominent questions are: What are the main ethical challenges for the professionals in the food chain? Who within this complex field holds responsibility for emerging issues? What does it mean for the food-related professions to work in a field of immense social tension? Which virtues are necessary to do a proper job?

Topics

The EurSafe Congress 2018 welcomes submissions from a broad range of disciplines, including philosophy, agricultural science, law, economics, and sociology. The topics of the Congress will range from fundamental issues in ethics to veterinary medicine, from transparency in the food chain to animal welfare. We welcome papers that use case studies to expose problem areas and suggest guidelines on how to deal with them

Congress topics include:

Professional Roles and Responsibility: General Issues

Sustainable Food Chains

Novel Approaches in Food Production Systems

Food Politics: Policy and Legislation

Media, Transparency, and Trust

Ethics of Consumption

Veterinary Ethics

Teaching and Research Ethics

Food, aquaculture, agriculture and animal ethics

You are welcome to submit abstracts for oral or poster. We welcome contributions on the topics above as well as general topics on food ethics, aquaculture ethics, agriculture ethics and animal ethics. We are also open to make room for workshops upon request during the conference. Furthermore we explicitly welcome practitioners’ contribution with non- scientific background.

Talking and thinking about food, consumption and about professions, which are involved in the whole process of production of Austrian specialty like Sacher cake, Viennese schnitzel or Mozartkugel is a highly debated discussion in Austria, and we welcome you to join this tradition in June 2018!